Description

Can we predict the nature of predictions about the future in education technology? Has “innovation” become a set of common tropes and reference points, regurgitated semi-annually?

All of us recognise the sinking feeling as we see decisions made based on professional technology predictions that appear to be based on nothing other than wishful thinking and speculation. As well as having an overt (and occasionally malign) influence on the student experience, the assumptions that underpin changes to the way learners and institutions interact are subtly reinforced by the way in which the “next big thing” is promoted.

This short, data-driven presentation (with supporting materials available online) will examine cycles and patterns in published “professional” predictions of the future of education technology (for example Gartner and NMC) and compare these to other indications of areas of common, agreed, areas of interest (for example conference themes and presentations, and funded programmes in the UK and beyond).

Drawing on analysis developed with Audrey Watters and informed by the work of Jim Groom, Stephen Downes, Alan Levine, the Spanish University for Distance Education and others, I hope to postulate a periodic model of meta-prediction drawing on 10 years (2004-2014) of data from multiple sources. My hypothesis is that many of the obsessions of “professional future-gazing” display periodicity and can thus be extrapolated with some confidence.

This analysis would allow us to identify and avoid common flaws in prediction, and to make a clearer judgement on what precisely is “new” about the next big thing. Moreover, it will allow us to reappraise the way that we use predictions in education technology, and enable us to distinguish what is important from what is merely fashionable.

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